Geoffrey Burling wrote:
I agree with you, I honestly do, but consider the
challenge I face in
my little corner of Wikipedia: it is the exception, not the rule, that
a given placename has several spellings & at least one alternative
name. Having only one name spelled one way per town, mountain, river --
& even person -- would make my research much easier, let alone naming
articles.
[...]
If you can come up with a better way to provide this information than
using those ugly parantheses, I'm all ears. But until then, I'll stick
with them. At least it's consistent, so if someone does come up with
a better way, it'll be much simpler to fix.
One method I like is to move it to its own section once it gets past
some subjective "too unwieldy" limit. For example, look at how [[Muammar
al-Gaddafi]] handles the zillions of transliteration variations: In a
separate "name" section (section 9 currently), not in the intro or
anywhere near it.
-Mark